In the past days I have been feeling less inclined to write. I am often tired, headachy and slightly nauseous. I actually looked up the physical symptoms of grief, and it all seems to fit in. I have up days and down days with it all. Some days go by and I am doing fine and then later not so much. I spend quite a bit of time alone. Which suits me at the moment. But I try to meet a friend every day for a coffee or a visit to a gallery. In the past week I have been to the Turner Prize at the Tate Britain and to the Garden Museum, apart from the Van Gogh exhibition in the National Gallery. I have been to a tour about the river Effra. I have gone to my tour guide training course evening. I have met up with others to talk through the memorial service for Kamalashila. I have walked on the Southbank.
Apart from these meetings, I am slowly dismantling the Virtual Vihara. Which is actually awful. Because Kamalashila spent so much time putting it up. If feels painful to undo what he has done so effectively and so idiosyncratically. But it cannot stay like it is. I am thinking about Miss Havisham’s room in Great Expectations. Things need to shift and change and transform to heal the gap Kamalashila has left. But it needs to take an appropriate time. I don’t know what that is. I felt with some things I have perhaps moved slightly too fast. But I am trying to consciously make small changes in that room every day. I am weary. This is yet another shift involving lots of stuff that needs to find another destination, another purpose or home. We made a massive effort when we moved from the cottage in East Suffolk to this London flat. The amount of things that needed to be sorted and shifted and passed on was about a third or perhaps even half of all our belongings at the time. Now I am having to condense everything to a one-person household. It doesn’t have to happen in one day, or one week, or one month. But it does need to happen at some point. I do get help, of course. Which is lovely. But the decisions need to come from me. And these are often hard to make. And apart from stuff, there are so many other strands that are lying untouched. Like live wires. I have to tread carefully.